made available to governmental and industrial interests. The unit was renamed the Engineering Research Institute in 1948. White continued as Director until 1953, by which time there were more than thirteen hundred staff members at work on more than two hundred projects a year, costing more than $6,000,000.
In 1922-23 the first degrees in geodesy and surveying were granted, with C. T. Johnston as chairman of the Department of Geodesy and Surveying. This program was discontinued in 1941, when the department was merged with the Department of Civil Engineering.
Although mathematics courses designed especially for engineering students have been taught at Michigan almost from the beginning, in 1928, at the urging of President Little, the Department of [Engineering] Mathematics merged with the Department of Mathematics of the Literary College. Three curriculums leading to the degrees of bachelor of science in engineering (mathematics), (astronomy), and (physics) were set up in 1928. The first degree in the mathematics curriculum was granted in the following year. The first degree in astronomy, with two years of work in any department of engineering, was conferred in 1938, but the program was discontinued in 1942. The first degrees in physics were granted in 1931, and by 1940 more than fifty had been conferred.
The number of hours of credit required for graduation was increased to 140 for all students entering after the fall of 1904. Six-year specialized courses were introduced in 1908, but did not prove successful. In 1912, a complete revision of all of the courses in engineering made it possible for a student in his senior year to have a much wider range of elective work than formerly. The new system provided that of the 140 hours of credit required for graduation, 125 hours were prescribed and the remaining fifteen hours could be elected from any one of the groups of studies outlined. All engineering students were to take the same subjects in their first year. Thereafter, the student chose the branch of engineering which he expected to follow and enrolled in that program.
The idea of a program of study longer than four years has borne fruit in the establishment of combined curriculums with several colleges within the University and with other institutions in the state. The first of these combined programs was established in 1921 with Albion College, whereby a student enrolled at Albion for three years, upon satisfactory completion of a prearranged program including substantially the work of the first two years of the College of Engineering, may be admitted to the College of Engineering, and after two additional years may be graduated in engineering. Under this agreement Albion College accepts the first year at the College of Engineering in lieu of its senior year and if the student's record is satisfactory grants him the bachelor's degree. This five-year course affords a broader education than is possible in the four-year course.
Other combined curriculums have been established through co-operation with colleges and professional schools on the campus, and with such industries as are able and willing to offer a definite program of graded work of educational value.
Graduate work is the generally accepted procedure for extending formal education, and from the beginning there have been graduate students in engineering at Michigan. In the early days graduate students were usually from classical colleges and took engineering after receiving their liberal arts degrees. It was not until about 1915, however, that sufficient progress was made in developing facilities for advanced or graduate work
